| Nationality | Rich, Robert, first earl of Warwick (1559?–1619), nobleman and politician, was the second son of Robert Rich, second Baron Rich (c.1537–1581), and his wife, Elizabeth Baldry (d. 1591). He was baptized in early January 1560. His accession to the Rich barony was unexpected and sudden. In 1578 he was enrolled at Gray's Inn, presumably in preparation for the life of a country magistrate, but in 1580 his elder brother, Richard, died without issue. He entered the Commons at a by-election on 7 February 1581 as knight of the shire for Essex, and succeeded his father twenty days later.
With landed estates worth perhaps £5000 per annum, mainly in central Essex, Rich found himself the most eligible bachelor in England. Lord Burghley, guardian of Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, and Henry Hastings, third earl of Huntingdon, guardian of Essex's sister Penelope (1563–1607) [see Rich, Penelope], swiftly arranged a match: Rich and Penelope were married probably on 1 November 1581. That 'being in the power of her friends' Penelope was wedded against her will 'unto one at whom she did protest at the very solemnity', and that Rich thereafter 'did study in all things to torment her' (BL, Lansdowne MS 885, fol. 86), were pieces of special pleading composed over twenty years later by her then lover, Lord Mountjoy. Mountjoy's aspersions, together with Sir Philip Sidney's cuckolding of Rich in print in the sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella, have combined to ensure that Rich has been dismissed as a boorish and talentless puritan zealot. By perverse contrast Sidney's less than honourable wishful thinking did nothing, even among Victorian commentators, to dent his reputation as the pattern of chivalry.
The more sober facts are that the couple had five children, that Essex was attached to Rich, and that he proved an energetic, if often rash and impulsive, leader of county society. He began his thirty-eight years as head of the family under the domination of his bastard uncle Richard, who had encouraged the second baron to espouse radical protestantism. In September 1581 Richard and his nephew visited John Aylmer, bishop of London, to solicit a preaching licence for their chaplain Robert Wright, recently ordained in Antwerp. When Aylmer refused to grant one without knowledge of Wright's orders and assurances of his conformity, Richard Rich physically assaulted him. The affair led to the high commission trial and imprisonment of Richard and Robert Wright but not, as sometimes stated, of Lord Rich himself.
Although sternly advised by Aylmer not to follow his uncle's counsels, Rich took no notice. As patron of eighteen Essex livings he was uniquely placed to become the lay leader of the county's godly clergy. Aylmer's hostility ensured that during the 1580s he met with limited success, the bishop refusing on three occasions to institute his presentees. From 1583, however, Rich successfully claimed ordinary jurisdiction at Good Easter, whilst in 1585 Aylmer accepted three of his candidates, including William Negus. In 1586 Rich imported as his household chaplain Ezekiel Culverwell, who remained with the family until 1592 despite a severe mauling from Aylmer during his triennial visitation in 1589.
Rich also used his position as a member of the upper house to promote the godly party in the Commons. He turned himself into an efficient campaign manager for Essex's county seats and influenced elections in the borough of Maldon. In 1586 he organized petitions to himself on behalf of ecclesiastical reform. In 1588 the privy council ordered him to cease canvassing on behalf of an alternative candidate to the government's nominee as junior knight of the shire. While during the eclipse of ‘political puritanism’ in the 1590s Rich probably remained quiescent, these early experiences of electioneering stood him in good stead thereafter. He also had contacts with his godfather, the earl of Leicester; Leicester asked for Rich's services in the Low Countries, but there is no evidence that he went, and the command of fifty lances allotted to him was soon assigned elsewhere.
With the birth in 1590 of their second son, Penelope regarded her duty to Rich as fulfilled and thereafter they lived apart. In the same year she began a liaison with Charles Blount, future Lord Mountjoy. Their first child, Penelope, baptized on 30 March 1592, their daughter Isabella, and their second son, Charles, all brought up as if they were Rich's, are found in the Rich pedigrees. Their eldest son, Mountjoy (b. 1597), is not. Meanwhile, Rich remained close to his brother-in-law Essex. In 1591 he was a commissioner for the trial of Ruy Lopez, whose (possibly) treasonable activities Essex had unmasked. In 1596, having advanced Essex £1000 (never recovered in Rich's lifetime) to finance the expedition to Cadiz, Rich sailed with the fleet but left it early, joining the earl of Shrewsbury's embassy to France. He abandoned the Islands voyage in 1597 because of seasickness.
Suffering a serious illness in late 1600, through which Penelope nursed him, Rich remained at a safe distance from her brother's rebellion and was, presumably unwillingly, one of the twenty-five peers summoned as judges to Essex's trial on 17 February 1601. If it was their incompatibility which initially drove Rich and Penelope apart, Essex's fall severed all further connection between them. Henceforth Rich abandoned his wife to her own devices. He was presumably influential in the election of Francis Barrington as junior knight of the shire for Essex in 1601, since in 1604 he exhibited great energy in securing his re-election. In 1605, Penelope being prepared to admit to adultery with a stranger, Rich sued for divorce. Archbishop Bancroft granted it on 14 November, strangely commending Penelope, berating Rich for his behaviour to her, and finally bidding him to 'go amongst his puritans' (BL, Egerton MS 2804, fol. 203r).
Rich had certainly continued to patronize them. After Aylmer's death in 1594 he had no difficulty in getting his candidates instituted, and most proved to be sturdy nonconformists. Of the five clergymen deprived in Essex between 1606 and 1609, three owed their benefices to Rich, and another was Ezekiel Culverwell. A privy councillor from 1608, Rich married in 1616 Frances (d. 1634), daughter of Sir Christopher Wray and widow of Sir George St Poll. John Chamberlain crowed that she had 'so conveyed her estate that he has little or nothing the better by her and, if she outlive him, like to carry away a great part of his' (Letters of John Chamberlain, 2.101). In fact Rich's will shows that by the terms of the marriage settlement she was entitled to £1000 per annum for life as his widow but to none of his property.
On 6 August 1618 Rich was created earl of Warwick on payment of £10,000 into the exchequer. Since he had no territorial connection with the county, his choice of title was assuredly a statement of his religious predilections: he was assuming the mantle of the last holder, the godly Ambrose Dudley. Rich had made his will on 15 September 1617, requesting burial in Felsted church ('all pomp and unnecessary charge therein to be avoided') and directing his eldest son Robert Rich (1587–1658), the second earl and his sole executor, to erect 'a comely and decent tomb' for his grandfather, father, brother Richard, and himself. He left probably in excess of £5000 in liquid assets, plus property in London, Essex (over seventy manors), Suffolk, and Norfolk. Children, grandchildren, and friends were generously remembered and £100 was bequeathed to the poor of Essex. All his servants were granted a full year's wages over and above what was due to them. His overseers, Sir Francis Bacon and Lord Darcy of Chiche, each received £40 in plate.
Rich died on 24 March 1619 at his London mansion, Warwick House, Holborn, and was buried on 7 April at Felsted. His second son, Henry Rich, was created earl of Holland. His eldest daughter, Lettice, married Sir George Carey, and his second, Essex, Sir Thomas Cheke. His third, Mary, died young. |